A Taste of Africa in Small Town America: Liefie Li Vine

Many of you might be able to relate to childhood summer trips to small towns while visiting relatives.

Small towns where nothing ever seemed to happen. Small towns where the grown-ups had people to visit and things to see, but for the schlepped-along kid, there was nothing to do but hang out at the Dairy Queen or cruise the aisles of local stores, trying to stay in air-conditioning.

My Mom’s hometown of Winnsboro, Texas was like that – it was a nice place, but I didn’t know anybody there, and so spent a lot of time reading my mother’s Nancy Drew detective novels in her old bedroom, and wondering how else to amuse myself.

We arrived a little after dark, and I knew what that usually meant in a small town: everything closed up tight downtown, and no place to eat but, well, the Dairy Queen.

Instead, to our surprise and delight, we saw lights on everywhere and multiple restaurants open on Winnsboro’s Main Street. I gaped into the front window of one of them, noting the fancy black-clad waitstaff and someone spinning pizza dough in the air near what appeared to be a wood-fired clay oven. A guitarist was playing on a small stage.

What rabbit hole had we fallen through?!

Mom joked that amazing things seem to happen when you allow liquor licensing in what was for decades a dry (no alcohol sales allowed) county.

Nearby was a brightly-colored place called Liefie Li Vine. It looked appealing too, so we walked in.

Mussels with steamed basmati rice plus turmeric, raisins, and other spices is one of the dinner entrees at Liefie Li Vine in downtown Winnsboro TX (photo by Sheila Scarborough)

Finding this in small town America in the face of our current U.S. urban-rural divide puts a huge smile on my face. A lot of people have worked very hard over the years to make Winnsboro a center for the arts, culture, and live music, so this is not some sort of overnight success story. They did the work that it takes to turn a vision into reality.

The fact that local patronage, and not just occasional or weekend visitors, keeps Liefie’s in business makes me smile as well. Fear of immigrants, “the other,” or the unknown in general often goes away when people have a chance to learn for themselves what another culture is like, and one way to do that is through food. I never thought that Winnsboro would be a place to learn about African cuisine, but it is and I am thrilled.

This can happen anywhere when towns support a rich tapestry of experiences.

A chess board encourages lingering at the bar at Liefie Li Vine in Winnsboro TX (photo by Sheila Scarborough)

“Liefie” is roughly translated from Afrikaans as “sweetie/sweetheart” or “dear.”

Wonderful Liefie Li Vine, thank you for taking a chance on a small Texas town, and becoming part of the reason that I always look forward to returning.

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Thank you for this beautifully detailed account. It is gratifying to consider Liefie and our lives from such a heartfelt perspective, and to step back and contemplate the impact that our efforts are ultimately making to the tapestry of American culture.

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